Japan may need 50% more electricity for hungry, hungry AI and chip fabs

Japan reckons it may need to generate 50 percent more electricity by 2050 because of growing local demand from chipmaking and datacenters running AI. The move follows a warning by DigitalBridge that it may run out of power within two years. The growing burden placed on power grids by high tech industry have caused concerns in …

[hardboiledphil]

So we all have to have reduced power vacuum cleaners and LED lights but industry can add 35% to enery usage (and consequently CO2) and no one's concerned?

[Lurko]

Hopefully before that point, people will have asked and been able to answer the question "does AI do anything useful, and do we need more of it?"

At the moment the answer's pretty clearly "no".

[that one in the corner]

The solution is obvious

Hamsters.

Many, many hamsters. In row upon row of exercise wheels, attached to teeny little generators. To cut power line losses, pop them in the adjoining racks.

And the hamsters' own generous secondary outputs can be shovelled up, packaged and sold on as the output from your Generative AI - won't even have to switch on most of the actual compute, just enough to run the (hamster-powered) customer billing.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: The solution is obvious

>Hamsters

In a country swarming with Godzilli, Mothra etc, surely you can do better than Hamsters ?

Unless they have a giant mutant radioactive hamster....

[jake]

Re: The solution is obvious

Japan sold Godzilla and friends to Hollywood before the turn of the century.

Getting long in the tooth, and forced to learn a new language, they no longer produce the power that they used to.

[Dostoevsky]

Youch!

There is no way a third of our energy output should be going to silicon space heaters that produce computation as a waste product.

[Anonymous Coward]

Optical gates

Once the optical gate tech becomes public - with the help of AI for mfg process. power use will go down. AI will be much faster, and humans can finally live in peace and comfort,,, no wait, that last part will never happen. Governments will finally have the power they need to monitor (and punish) every person all the time.

[Brian Miller]

The Nuclear Option?

Gee golly whiz, it looks like Japan needs nuclear power plants. Oh, wait, they have the same problems as the rest of the world: bad design and operation. Uh, burn wood and coal?